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FEATURE | DESCRIPTION |
KEY FEATURES | A distribution from Poland (polonization is however just an option) - one of the most active Open Source projects. A distribution both for server and desktop, popular among advanced users only. Very modular packaging of both kernel and standard apps makes the manual package compilation almost useless. Very well written start scripts. Incomplete English documentation may be a turn-off. Read the concept of PLD to get the overview of the distro. |
Supported architectures | x86 (optimized for i386, i586 or i686), alpha, sparc, PPC (during testing) |
Minimal hardware requirements | i386 16MB RAM |
INSTALLATION | |
Installer - overall | (6) PLD installer shouldn't cause many problems for persons who ever installed any Linux distribution. Advanced user may benefit from such options as: network installation or installation from hard drive (with no CD required). There is also an option to install PLD manually, using LiveCD, RescueCD or chroot. |
Package selection | (6) There is an option of installing selected packages (out of 10,000 available on ftp server). The problem may be that the packages are not grouped into larger groups (like, KDE, Gnome, etc) so that the manual selection may be quite annoying. |
Predefined package groups | (4) The user can select some of the predefined groups, like KDE workstation or server system. Sometimes however, it causes problems during the installation process. |
Expert mode install | (3) There is an option to choose the automatic installation or do all manually (expert mode is the default). |
Graphical installer | (0) Ncurses based installer. No graphical one. |
Installer speed | (8) Very fast installer. Base system installs in 5-10 minutes. System configuration can however take much longer (even couple hours), depending on user's knowledge and determination. |
CONFIGURATION | |
Graphical system management | (0) None, except standard Gnome/KDE tools. |
Console-based system management | (6) Specific tool, ncurses based pldconf. |
PACKAGE SYSTEM | |
Number of packages | (7) There are over 12 thousands of packages prepared and ready to use. Additionally, there are ready/test and nest packages and a rich collection of spec files in CVS for manual package builds. |
Package management, automatic dependency resolving | (8) Some believe that the PLD's package management tool - poldek is the best one on the market. We'll just admit that it is in fact, very good in dependency resolving and just works. |
Graphical package management tools | (5) Poldex - a graphical frontend to poldek. Works. |
PERFORMANCE | |
System boot-up speed | (8) Bootup scripts of PLD are famous for their elegance and speed. Apart from them they are very well written and easy to reconfigure. Standard system boots up in couple of seconds. In case of desktops it can take up to 25-30 seconds, depending on the hardware. |
System responsiveness | (8) All packages are compiled for all supported architectures (i386, i586, i686, athlon, or amd64) so everyone can choose the most optimized packages for the specific processor. Desktop responsiveness is very good, in spite of no desktop-specific optimizations. |
STABILITY/SECURITY | |
Popularity | (2) PLD is quite popular among advanced Linux users in Poland. Lots of public institutions like universities (including the Warsaw University) us it as a main server/desktop system. In the world however, PLD Linux is not as popular as it should be :) |
Security focus | (7) PLD is security-focused. SELinux was available in PLD as one of the first distros. Critical services are configured in a secure manner. Very fast reaction in case of remote holes. |
Stability and maturity | (5) PLD is evolving all the time. It provides rather up-to-date software, but one could choose (as in Debian) to use the older and more stable versions. |
INTERNATIONALIZATION | |
Does the installer support multiple languages? | (9) The installer is available in English and Polish. |
Is the system localized after installation? | (2) Localization is optional. Default system language is English. |
Is manual system localization easy? | (7) Localization is not hard to perform and the system is well prepared for using unpopular locale settings and languages. |
APPLICATIONS/NETWORK | |
Support for restricted formats | (0) ? |
Sagem DSL modem support | (6) Supported. Appropriate driver is available in repository through poldek. Documentation is available on the PLD website (in Polish only) |
Alcatel DSL modem support | (6) Speedtouch is available through poldek. We only need to download the firmware and write the init.d script. Documentation is available on the PLD website (in Polish only) |
ISDN support | (6) There are all ISDN modules available in the default kernel. Kernel modularity is very properly used by PLD developers therefore kernel manual recompilation is almost never necessary. |
Wireless support | (4) The drivers and tools are available. |
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Discussion
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I am an IT student and this week I was asked to prepare a project on PLD Linux distribution. Though I managed to collect some pieces of information I had the feeling that they were not enough VM Ware. I tried Wikipedia but to my horror I realized that it does not have an article on PLD Linux. It was at this time that I came across this blog. It has been of immense help to me in gathering each and every detail that I needed about PLD Linux.